Imaginary Productions
ROLE
Recording Engineer, Sound Designer, Musician
Assignment Brief
Creative capture and Imaginary Productions is a project that will develop your skills in capturing or recording a range of key instruments incollaboration with your colleagues, working with live performing session musicians to develop a range of performed loops.Instrument recordingskills can enable music producers to develop the range of materials at their disposal.The second part of the project is for you to create a imaginaryproduction using the materials you have recorded, edited and processed to envisage and create your own personal version of the material you havedeveloped, with full experimental and creative scope.
YEAR
2021
Performers
Charles Robert Quaye - Drums
Jade Shamrock
PLATFORM
Logic X
My Project
She Heard She's On My Mind
We recorded drums during our first of several sessions. When it came time to record the kit, the Earthworks Audio DK7 Drum Mic Kit was employed since these microphones are built for certain aspects. These microphones have been designed particularly for use with a kick drum. We chose a dynamic microphone over a condenser because dynamic microphones can tolerate significantly greater sound pressure levels, while condensers are far more sensitive. The frequency response chart below illustrates the SR20LS's response and demonstrates why it was ideal for this sound. Additionally, it has a cardioid polar pattern, which means the recording is considerably more concentrated on a single location and has less space bleed, resulting in a cleaner kick drum recording.
We utilised a DM20 for the snare top, as, like the D112, it is still a dynamic microphone and hence ideal for capturing the snare's ferocity. Additionally, we began to utilise them on the bottoms of the snare and toms.
Initially, I did not record a bass for my composition since I assumed the music would be more acoustic guitar solo. Fortunately, using my Behringer UMC22 Audiophile setup at home, I was subsequently capable of recording my Ibanez GSRM20B bass using DI
Two SR25's were utilised for the overheads. Which are a pair of condenser mics that are ideal for overhead usage due to their wide frequency response, which allows us to catch the whole kit as well as the brilliance of the cymbals. When I recorded the whole kit, I set the pace at 178bpm. This was advantageous since when it came time to produce the demo track, I was also able to play the pace at 89bpm, allowing for a greater variety of application.
As this was my second try at creating a sample track for loops, we didn't have as much time as I would have wanted to explore. The setup remained the same, but I struggled to come up with a composition of loops that I liked. As I had initially simply recorded around eight bars to loop of drums, bass, and guitar with no modifications, it became difficult to consider the song's direction. Additionally, the approach was different from my prior works, since the drum was played in 4/4 swing manner. This will, however, provide me with more loops to use in future compositions.
To fully capture the piano's acoustics, we selected a Neumann U87 because its all-around capabilities. What distinguishes the U87 is its one-of-a-kind blend of linearity and personality. While its on-axis frequency response is very flat, it does possess a certain appeal. It just sounds correct! As a result, the U87 is both adaptable and readily recognisable. It embodies studio quality with its big diaphragm condenser microphone and has become the benchmark against which other microphones are judged.
After recording everything, I began chopping the audio and building my loop library. Because it was obvious that certain stuff had been captured out of order, I had to modify the recordings to make the sessions more concise. I edited the clips in Logic and then used the flexitools to realign the timings to the right rhythm. This enabled me to generate loops that I could expand upon while producing my demo music, since I was certain that no timing difficulties would arise once the loops were repeated, and it was clean sailing from here on.
To offer myself greater expression via the loops I'd made, I placed them all up on a new Logic track and applied a mix of numerous effects to each in an attempt to maintain a consistent vibe. This will also be beneficial since I'm certain that the timings of effects between loops will be accurate if used in another song. I'm extremely interested in experimenting with a loop in which I used a plug-in I possess called Toneforge: Ben Bruce. Designed for drums, this gated amp added a lovely industrial vibe to a drum loop I intend to explore at a later date.
The loops I'd constructed were used to create a basic sorrowful strummed chord sequence, which I focussed on developing. When you say nothing at all, this reminds me a lot of early 2000s pop vocalists including Ronan Keating's rendition of When You Say Nothing At All (Overstreet & Schiltz, 1999)- or early notable midwestern emo bands similar to Dashboard Confessionals. Overall, the track I created exhibits my ability to take the audio I recorded and turn it into a useful loop library, as well as to further expand the loops to produce a well-organized demonstration. A number of talents have been developed that I may use to future recording sessions, as well as a reasonable level of understanding about how to utilise Logic, which I was unfamiliar with before to starting. The application has given me the confidence that I will be
able to use it to write music of professional quality in the near future.
Bibliography
Overstreet, P. & Schiltz, D., 1999. When You Say Nothing At All. [Sound Recording] (Island Records).